Land Quality Indicators

Land use and land cover changes in the Brazilian Cerrado: A multidisciplinary approach to assess the impacts of agricultural expansion

“…Cultivation in these less favorable lands could for example, demand major investments, in capital and management, to minimize negative ecosystem responses and to avoid land degradation . Pressures on land quality can contribute or cause various forms of land degradation such as soil erosion, adverse changes in water resources, and decline in the biological condition of forests and natural rangelands (Pieri et al, 1995). These authors call attention to the fact that the costs of rehabilitating degraded areas are typically much higher than preventive measures, and for this reason, they highlight the importance of indicators, such as have been used here, as tools for measuring changes in land quality and providing "early warning of adverse trends" and targeting critical areas.…”

“…We selected indicators from each group based on the literature (FAO, 1997;OECD, 1993OECD, , 1999OECD, , 2003bO'Neill et al, 1997;Pieri, Dumanski, Hamblin, & Young, 1995) in order to identify potential indicators and the main issues related to regional LULC changes. The selection also took into account the relevance of the indicators regarding the environmental issues in the area and the utilization of information obtained from a remote sensing/GIS approach.…”

“…Change and fragmentation of natural habitats are often proposed as indicators of the state of the environment (OECD, 1999), or as an indicator of land quality (Pieri et al, 1995).…”

Assessment and mapping the sensitive areas to desertification in an insular Sahelian mountain region Case study of the Ribeira Seca Watershed, Santiago Island, Cabo Verde

“…Such an indicator-based approach has seldom been applied to assess, monitor and evaluate changes in the quality of land resources and desertification in Cabo Verde. At the national, island, municipality and watershed scales, this can help to indicate priorities for policy development and budgetary allocation by governments, local governments (municipalities), NGOs and rural development projects, providing a proper foundation for policy formation and decision-making on matters affecting land resources at all scales and levels (Pieri et al, 1995). To refine the parameter selection and number of parameters used, this research was largely based on the results matched at three workshops in the framework of the implementation of the DESIRE project in the watershed of Ribeira Seca.…”

The complexity of soil biological sustainability

“…Thresholds were defined by Dumanski et al (1992) as "levels beyond which a system undergoes significant change; points at which stimuli provoke response". Thus threshold limits are closely related to resistance and resilience: they represent values of a variable beyond which rapid and even exponential damage occurs (Pieri et al, 1995;Schjønning, 2004).…”